And Then the Robot Starts Dancing

I recently had a "Hey, do you know that TV ad?" conversation with a friend who has no particular interest in advertising and I noticed something, well, normal. He kept telling me about several commercials he had seen and liked - most of them for cars - but he got wrong almost all the brands those commercials were for. As far as he could recall, "the one with the dancing robot" was for Volkswagen and not for Citroen.

This means then that he remembered the creative ideas in those adverts rather than the actual brands they were advertising. Does any brand want that? Exactly. So could this mean that consumers don't pay much attention during commercial breaks? Or could this be the advertising agencies' fault?

There is a positive answer to the first question. Yes, it is a fact that only a small number of TV viewers actually pay attention during commercial breaks, which means that the majority of them ignore TV advertising (and engage in other activities) or are only affected by it on a subconscious level, as in the case of my friend.

As regards the answer to the second question, the situation is certainly more complicated than it may seem. Advertising agencies build brands by creating brand image and brand personality and all that, right? In order for them to grab the attention of the consumers, they must come up with memorable adverts that say "Hey, you, don't go pee, you want to see this!", hence the dancing robot. Still, TV advertising today seems to be more like a competition of creative ideas rather than good selling techniques, so the risk of people having no idea what "that cool ad" is for seems only natural. Having said that, the lack of attention on behalf of the audience might be a matter of association - as a component within the facets model of advertising effects - between advertising and the product being advertised. But that's a different story. Actually, it is not, only I will expand on it in a future post.

Relevant Thoughts

Well, I've been thinking and I don't believe that the big idea has even been invented yet. The wheel? Seriously? That's the smallest idea that the homo sapiens' brain has ever come up with. Which is why it is probably the greatest idea, since it brought about progress. Put simply, I think that if an idea is able to make a tree grow twice as fast as it normally does, that idea is a great idea because it leads to something great: a faster regeneration of the Earth.

Trevor Beattie was right, I guess: There are no real big ideas. I mean, have you seen the universe? I think that any idea is limited to this almost round planet's troposphere and, every now and then, its exosphere.

 

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Still, I do believe that an idea can change the world. Jupiter might not give a damn, but I do believe that good ideas are worth fighting for. Perhaps it all boils down to belief, to how sure one is that their idea is able to change things. Perhaps it is the usefulness of an idea that establishes the latter's dimensions, or maybe it's its crazyness. Perhaps there are no big ideas, but there are big small ideas.

It's the big small ideas that matter.

Trevor Beattie at Coventry University

Friday, 1pm. I'm thinking: 'The world can end after this.' That's because Trevor Beattie is about to talk about advertising and big ideas and big ideas that are not big ideas and, of course, political advertising.

As the legend behind FCUK and Wonderbra and a life-long Labour supporter, Trevor Beattie begins his talk by focusing on ideas. In his view, the truly big ideas are as rare as the invention of the wheel and that of the Internet. The ideas we refer to as big are, according to Trevor, small ideas. The ad man himself admits he has never had a big idea in his life. However, Trevor agrees that "without ideas, there isn't anything else", because it is the sum of all the small ideas that push the world forward.

"Worry about the little things, because the big things will happen". Indeed, one should probably concentrate more on getting the details right rather than trying to influence the things that will happen anyway, sooner or later. It is the actual details that make the big things bad or good or great. I say worry about everything.

One of the reasons why I admire Trevor's work is because it is intriguing. Exciting. And within the highly sensitive media today, his work is even more fun to see. Also exciting is the fact that he is flying into space next year as the first fare-paying space traveller. I am not going to repeat myself.

Anyway, it is good that the world didn't end after his talk, because I got the chance to talk to him in person. I told him about me and my mates' plans of setting up an advertising agency and guess what he said. He said "That's fantastic, go for it." We also got some good advice from him regarding this matter. I am going to repeat myself: We got advice from Trevor Beattie.

Friday was a good day.

Rewind

How many buttons do we need to press in order for us to live these days? How many screens do we need to stare at in order to feel entertained? Some believe the future is  more buttons to press and even more screens to stare at. Only slimmer, of course. I believe the future is the beginning. Not ‘like’ the beginning. The beginning.

Of course we like the iPod and the iPad and the iPhone and other i’s, but I think at some point in the future – given that 2012 is yet another boring end of the world when nothing’s going to happen - we'll get tired of being useless creatures with idle brains, so we'll gradually give up all the high-tech and go back to basics. That is not to say that self-destruction isn’t fun. I mean seriously, having a robot that can do the chores for you doesn’t sound bad at all, does it?

But what if the future is our own history? What if all we do is head towards our past – no round flying things, no inhabited Moon, no Internet. Just the beginning.

Don’t get all ‘wtf’ on me now. Just remember that a few centuries ago the great minds posited that the world was flat. Not heart-shaped, but flat, for God’s sake!!! And they thought they’d fall off it once they’ve reached the edge. So it is not impossible that our future be our beginning.

Nothing is impossible. Impossible is nothing.

What If + Why Not

It started as a 'what if' question. The idea, I mean. Me and two other mates from uni have been successfully working together on several advertising campaigns and projects as part of our Advertising degree, and at some point we realised that starting our own freelance ad agency is too tempting for us not to give it a try. Or think about it seriously, at least. Besides, we feel that we're upsetting the universe if we don't start using our ideas and ridiculous passion for great advertising to the benefit of so many local and regional businesses showing potential to grow. So we have the idea. The next step - coming up with a strategy.

I know that optimism can be disappointing at times, but somewhere along the way I learned that I'm just not cut out to be a pessimist, so now I'm openly hoping that this project will soon become tangible. I mean, why not?